Episode 424: The Beast of Gévaudan (with Gigi Griffis)
/Animal attacks on the French peasantry, a mysterious beast, and a years long hunt. We’re joined by author Gigi Griffis as we discuss The Beast of Gévaudan, her book We Are The Beasts, and re-writing monsters as saviors.
Content Warning: This episode contains conversations about or mentions of death, child death, animal attacks, animal death, misogyny, war, natural disasters, and blood.
Guest
Gigi Griffis is the author of We Are The Beasts, The Wicked Unseen, And The Trees Stare Back, The Lioness, and The Empress (as seen on Netflix), among other things. She is a sucker for little-known histories, unlikable female characters, and all things Europe.
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Cast & Crew
- Co-Hosts: Julia Schifini and Amanda McLoughlin
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- Music: Brandon Grugle, based on "Danger Storm" by Kevin MacLeod
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About Us
Spirits is a boozy podcast about mythology, legends, and folklore. Every episode, co-hosts Julia and Amanda mix a drink and discuss a new story or character from a wide range of places, eras, and cultures. Learn brand-new stories and enjoy retellings of your favorite myths, served over ice every week, on Spirits.
Transcript
AMANDA: Hello, ConSpiriters. It's Amanda. I have some very exciting news for anyone who lives in and around Portland, Oregon, which is we are coming to you live. We are doing a live show with Join the Party, a doubleheader live show all for one price on Sunday, March 23rd 2025. Get your tickets now at spiritspodcast.com/live. And the ticket price includes all fees, by the way, in case you're like, "Why is it a weird amount?" That's why. Julia and I are so excited to be there. We'll have a raffle, we'll be signing stuff, we'll do a VIP Meet and Greet for MultiCrew members. If you're at the top two tiers in the MultiCrew, you get free tickets and VIP Meet and Greet for all of our live shows. We're gonna keep podcasts weird. We're gonna keep Portland weird. We're so excited, so come on through if you're in the Pacific Northwest, spiritspodcast.com/live.
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AMANDA: Welcome to Spirits Podcast, a boozy dive into mythology, legends and folklore. Every week, we pour a drink and learn about a new story from around the world. I'm Amanda.
JULIA: And I'm Julia. And we are joined this week by the wonderful Gigi Griffis. Gigi, thank you so much for joining us. Can you tell our audience a little bit about who you are and what you do?
GIGI: Yeah. Thank you so much for having me. So my name is Gigi Griffis, and I am an author of a variety of books set in the past. So you could call that historical fiction. However, some of them are set in the very near past, and so I have books set in even the '90s and the '80s, as well as my most recent book, which is called We Are The Beasts, which is set in early modern France during a real unsolved historical mystery known as the Beast of Gévaudan, which is, I think, what we're going to talk about today.
JULIA: It is what we're going to talk about today. And I love when we get an email from a potential guest being like, "Hey, I'd love to come on the show and talk about—" insert topic here, and then it's something I've never heard of before. It always makes me so excited to be like, "What is this? I've never heard of it." And just kind of get into my own little deep dive. But I'm so excited that you're gonna be able to be here and talk about the Beast of— say it one more time for me.
GIGI: Gévaudan.
JULIA: The—
GIGI: But I might be saying it wrong. Please, like, no French people at me.
JULIA: The Beast of Gévaudan, but I took five years of French. I still can't pronounce a single French word. It's great.
AMANDA: That's the American way, guys. That's how we know we're American, and that's not a problem for anywhere else in the world.
GIGI: And advance apologies to all people who speak French on how much I'm gonna butcher the names of people and places in this, even though I have literally been to these places, I still cannot do it.
JULIA: We try our best here. I think I would love, first off, a little bit of maybe an introduction to the book itself before we dive into the actual story behind it, the historical story behind it.
GIGI: Sure. So first, I'll give you just a little context of the historical story, since that's kind of the basis of the book. So The Beast of Gévaudan was an unknown creature. We still to this day do not know what it is, which is part of the fun of the story. It's part of what has kept people engaged with it for so many years. And you have whole books written by historians arguing for various things that this creature could have been. And so in early modern France, in a region known as Gévaudan which was a region that was mostly very poor, very impoverished, and had a lot of shepherdesses and candlemakers and things like that. This mystery beast starts attacking and killing people, mostly shepherdesses, because, of course, they're the ones out in the fields, right?
JULIA: Uh-hmm.
GIGI: And there are somewhere between 100-200 attacks, many of them resulting in deaths. And so the king, who normally doesn't pay attention to this region, is like, "Oh, shit, I better do something about this." And sends his hunters out to hunt this beast. Eventually, a beast is killed. The attacks do eventually stop, and we'll get into that in— as we talk about it. But we still to this day, don't know what it is. So the idea behind the book was, I was really fascinated by where this is an intersection of a real life event and a lot of kind of myth that has grown up around it, which is very much my jam. I wanted to write a story set during this event, but I also didn't like that I was gonna have to write the story about a lot of girls dying, right?
JULIA: Uh-hmm.
GIGI: So I was like, "What if this were a monster story about saving girls instead?"
JULIA: Hmm.
GIGI: And so our two teenage protagonists, when the beast comes to their region and starts attacking people, instead of seeing it as their doom, they see it as their salvation. And so they decide to use the beast as cover to fake the deaths of the girls in their village who are in really dangerous households and get them away. So it is a monster story about saving ourselves.
JULIA: I am obsessed. That sounds amazing. Oh, my goodness. So We Are The Beasts, I believe is out already, so people can order it now. Like you can click on the link that is in the description of this episode and just get it right now. You know, if that enticed you enough.
AMANDA: You sure can.
JULIA: I'm really excited to dig in deeper to The Beast of Gévaudan, because in doing the research after you suggested the episode, I found it very similar and very appealing, too. We've talked about the, like, German historic werewolves in that, like, there were several serial killers who were, like, basically mauling and eating people, and this felt very similar, but I like that it's also— we can never prove that it wasn't a human, but we also couldn't prove that it was a human, so I'm very excited. Let's dig in deeper. Tell us a little bit more about The Beast of Gévaudan.
GIGI: So the beast itself, lots and lots of people saw it, of course, right? So some people saw it and then they died. Obviously, we don't have their accounts.
JULIA: Uh-hmm.
GIGI: And we also had people who were attacked and survived their beast attacks. So we do have people who are describing this beast to us.
JULIA: Uh-hmm.
GIGI: And I actually have here from— some of the real descriptions of what they said and I'm going to kind of—
JULIA: Primary source. Primary source.
AMANDA: Primary source.
GIGI: And I'm going to give it to us kind of in the order of non-fantastical to fantastical, okay?
JULIA: Just an animal to something otherworldly.
GIGI: Yeah, to like something absolutely no. So first they started out and they're like, "Oh, the chest is as wide as a horse. It's the size of a one-year old bull. Its paws are as strong as a bear, and it has six claws each as long as a finger."
JULIA: Whoa.
GIGI: "Its body is as long as a leopard, and it has rust-colored hair with a black stripe on its back the width of four fingers from neck to the base of the tail. The tail is as thick as an arm and at least four feet long. Its eyes are as big as a calf and they sparkle."
JULIA: Ooh.
GIGI: "Its ears are short, like a wolf and they're upright. And the fur on its belly is whitish." And then they told us, "It can jump 28 feet in the air, straight up. It has fiery eyes. It's bulletproof."
JULIA: Whoa.
GIGI: "It walks on its hind legs."
JULIA: What?
GIGI: "It can snap apart a human skull in a single bite. It's got talons on its paws."
JULIA: Okay.
GIGI: "It's got a tail that's like a snake."
JULIA: Uh-hmm.
GIGI: "It can kill you with just its breath."
AMANDA: Oh.
GIGI: "And it gave a boy a fever just by looking at him." That was in the papers, actually. They were like, "This thing is giving people fevers. Watch out."
JULIA: You got about halfway through, and I was like, "All right, how many like, French peasants have seen what a leopard looks like?" I would— it seem— it's so unrealistic. And then we got into the later stuff, I'm like, "Oh, this is just some, like, Pliny the Elder bullshit right there.
GIGI: Well, and it's different people doing some of these different descriptions, right? Because we—
JULIA: Uh-hmm.
GIGI: —also have a nobleman who sees the dead animal in the end and offer some of these descriptions up as well. So he would be more likely to recognize an exotic animal than a French peasant would be, but he still did not know what it was—
AMANDA: Uh-hmm.
GIGI: —when he's describing it, which is interesting. And the other thing they said is that it can speak like a man. Then it went into, "It's a witch, and it's God's punishment for losing the war, and it's a werewolf."
JULIA: Hmm.
AMANDA: Sure.
JULIA: Yes, of course. We always circle back to werewolf at the end of the day, don't we?
GIGI: Yes, exactly.
AMANDA: I do like how at the beginning the description was really— I'm picturing, like, one of my more dramatic uncles being like, "Yeah, man, I survived this attack, man. Like, yeah, the tusks were as long as my forearm, man." And it's like— it's stretching reality, but it's just enough that you can believe it.
GIGI: Exactly.
JULIA: Yeah, the old fisherman story.
GIGI: Exactly. Well, and so much—
JULIA: Uh-hmm.
GIGI: —of reading the research for this felt like that. It felt like a guy who was a hunter kind of amping up his description of his hunt, right? Like, "Oh, it's bulletproof. I shot it and it got back up." And all of these hunters are, like, "I shot it and it's bulletproof." And I'm like, "You know, you guys are probably just bad shots. I think—"
AMANDA: Yeah, ammo wasn't that good back then.
JULIA: Uh-hmm. It was just a little ball, you know?
GIGI: Yeah, exactly. And it's kind of scatter shot and— yeah. So I—
AMANDA: Uh-hmm.
GIGI: —so I think you guys just were missing.
JULIA: Yeah, I think you guys— maybe this thing was just really fast and you guys aren't as good at hunting as you think you are.
AMANDA: So what is it that elevated this from a series of tall tales to a legend that we talk about and that you can research?
GIGI: I think that it's the fact that it killed so many people, and this actually became one of Europe's first cross border news stories.
AMANDA: Ooh.
JULIA: Whoa.
GIGI: Because of how brutal these attacks were, how frequently they were coming, the Courrier d'Avignon picked up the news story, which normally peasant stories didn't really make it into the newspaper. They pick up the news story and they're like, "It's, you know, looking at people and giving them fevers." And so people— it just captured the imagination. This horror, this like terror that was stalking the countryside really started capturing the imagination. And then newspapers in places like Paris and London and even Russia also ended up picking this up over time. And so I think that it was— because it was so terrifying, because it was so brutal, and because it hit that first paper, it really hit a tipping point for us to know about it today. And I think historians, specifically, we love an unsolved mystery. Like a lot of history, we're like, "Okay, well, you can trace back to what actually happened, right?"
JULIA: Uh-hmm.
GIGI: But in this case, we don't know what this animal was, and so people are really obsessed with, you know, coming up with the theory and then backing that theory.
JULIA: Yeah. I— It feels so sensationalized, which I think is really interesting, because at the end of the day, a lot of people died from this thing. However, this idea that it grew to such a story that it was crossing nations and, like, people in London were reading about this French countryside killings, is so fascinating and so interesting to me. Especially for the time period, because this was— I want to say, we just had gotten off of a war, France and England, and now we're about to get into another war with France and England.
GIGI: Yes.
JULIA: I— it's very interesting that, like, it crossed so many borders despite the war efforts and stuff like that.
GIGI: Or maybe because of that.
JULIA: Oh, yeah.
GIGI: So that's actually kind of a pet theory of mine. I— you know, I have no proof of this being the cause, but they had just lost the Seven Years' War with England.
AMANDA: Uh-hmm.
GIGI: And so part of the sensationalized stuff in the— like, their own media or within, you know, bishops and whatever was, "Hey, this is God's punishment, because we lost this war with England."
JULIA: Hmm.
GIGI: And so I wonder if there's an element of— because all eyes were kind of turned on them, because of this war, because they were the losers of the war, that also was a reason that these foreign papers wanted to pick it up, or the bigger cities wanted to pick up this story.
JULIA: Uh-hmm. I'm also— I am seeing some resemblance, and I'm not sure if it's just because it's two topics that you've written about, or if there is actually a connection here, but seeing this kind of, like, similar sensationalism to the Satanic Panic and also the rise of evangelical Christian, like, blaming stuff, like this sort of thing, like, "Oh, we lost this war."
AMANDA: Uh-hmm.
JULIA: "And now, God is punishing us with other Christians, like, believing that natural disasters are a way that God is punishing us." I'm very curious if there is a history repeating itself element to that.
GIGI: I mean, to me, it is. I love a good panic in history and so, like a lot of my books end up taking place around panics or revolutions.
JULIA: Uh-hmm.
GIGI: I do think that they're, like, history rhymes, like, we say, right? Like, you get all of these different panics over time.
AMANDA: Hmm.
GIGI: And they're all tied to whatever the culture is at time, but they look really similar when you really boil down to it. It's like, "Okay."
JULIA: Uh-hmm.
GIGI: If something bad is happening and we feel like it's outside of our control, then we look to the supernatural, whether that's God, whether that's the devil, whether that's some other thing, you know, depending on what your legends and religions and myths are in the area and the time that you're in.
AMANDA: Yeah.
JULIA: Yeah, absolutely. So I'm curious, then, I'm sure a lot of scholars have different— differing opinions as to what the beast was, and I know we'll probably never have a real answer, but what are some of the theories as to what it could have been or was?
GIGI: So, okay, what was it really? There's a lot of different theories, like you said. And the most kind of vanilla theory is that it's a wolf.
JULIA: Uh-hmm.
GIGI: Right? Because occasionally you do get animals that normally aren't man-eaters that become man-eaters. And so that kind of first theory is it's either a wolf or it's a pack of wolves that have gone rogue and started eating people.
JULIA: Uh-hmm.
GIGI: So the argument for that is that there's kind of uncontrolled hunting in the region at the time, and so possibly prey animals were lesser than they were before. And so the wolves were starting to turn to other sources of food.
JULIA: Uh-hmm.
GIGI: So that's kind of— when people argue for that, that's really what they're arguing for, is that these shifts in hunting patterns, shifts in forestry patterns were causing wolves to come into more contact with humans. And it could have been one wolf, or it could have been multiple wolves, and it just was this time of great—
AMANDA: Uh-hmm.
GIGI: —upheaval between humans and wolves. Now, I personally don't think it was a wolf.
JULIA: Yeah, I was gonna say, I feel like a French peasant would probably know what a wolf looked like, and they wouldn't be saying it was this big and it could jump, and it had sparkling eyes and could speak.
AMANDA: Right?
GIGI: Exactly. So for me, I think it's actually, like, classism and sexism that really, like, made that the theory of choice for people, because the people who are telling these stories are mostly young women and very poor.
JULIA: Hmm.
GIGI: And so I think this is an issue of believing women. And so when they say it's not a wolf, I believe that it's not a wolf.
JULIA: Uh-hmm. Uh-hmm.
GIGI: Also, this thing is eating a large quantity of human flesh that is just more than a wolf can actually eat.
JULIA: Yeah.
GIGI: Of a human. And so it would have to be multiple wolves, if it was anything having to do with a wolf.
JULIA: Now, I'm curious as to what your personal theory is, that it— what it might have been.
GIGI: Well, I'm not going to tell you which one of these I subscribe to, because you got to read the book.
JULIA: Of course, naturally.
GIGI: Because you will get my pet theory.
JULIA: Uh-hmm.
GIGI: But I will tell you, kind of. I will outline the different theories and so you can kind of, you know, come to your own conclusion.
JULIA: Uh-hmm.
GIGI: But another theory was that it is the devil himself in the shape of a wolf. That was, like, very, you know, important theory at the time, obviously.
AMANDA: Obviously.
GIGI: And then another one was, again, they feel like, because they lost this war, this might be God's punishment for losing the war. I actually have a quote here from a book called The Gévaudan Tragedy and this is what he had to say about this theory. "The Bishop of Mende, on the other hand, saw his warnings confirmed that parents were neglecting the Christian education of their children, in particular, the shameless immorality of adolescent girls provoked God's anger."
AMANDA: Hmm.
GIGI: "The Beast," said the bishop, "was the executor of divine death sentences. In other words, the parents who mourned their children's death were themselves to blame."
JULIA: Whoa.
AMANDA: And at the same time, my heart is, you know, split in two, where I completely understand why a parent worried about a vulnerable kid, would be like, "Well, those parents must have done something wrong," because the reality that life is really that random and that tragic is something I can't live with, and also that is the worst possible thing you could ever say as someone has lost a kid. Like, jeez.
GIGI: Right.
JULIA: Yeah, yeah. Oof.
AMANDA: Oof.
GIGI: Right. It's actually your fault, guys, sorry. Well, and this version of God is so unserious to me, because, like, if this is actually a punishment for losing the war, like, why wouldn't you punish the nobility that went into war?
JULIA: Yeah.
GIGI: Like, why are you like, "Oh, these, like, 12-year-old peasant girls, that's who we're gonna punish."
JULIA: Right. The 12-year-old peasant girls whose fathers probably weren't even soldiers in the war, you know? Like they— they're just farming back at home, and they're the ones getting punished? That makes no sense.
GIGI: Just trying to survive, literally.
JULIA: It's always a little frustrating to me when I see history repeating itself in such a, like, clear and obvious way. And I'm just like, "Oh, we're still doing the thing that we were doing in the 1700s in France, here in America, in 2025?"
AMANDA: Uh-hmm.
JULIA: "Okay, sure."
GIGI: What are you talking about? It's never women's fault or girls' fault. So then the next theory, also more fantastical one, is werewolf. As you already mentioned, this actually has similarities to other kind of werewolf stories in Europe, in different parts of Europe. There was an early medieval werewolf myth that said that innocent people could be trapped as a werewolf by another person, often a woman, because, again, women are to blame.
AMANDA: Hmm.
GIGI: And another medieval myth said that anyone who was excommunicated from the church became a werewolf for a period of time. So there were these ideas that people could be either turned into or, like, make themselves into werewolves, evil actions of either themselves or another person.
JULIA: Yeah. And a lot of those tended to happen around the, like, Spanish inquisitions and the witch hunts of Europe. So I'm not, like, entirely surprised that we're still kind of being like, "Oh, well, you left the church, so a bad thing happened to you."
GIGI: Another explanation, which you guys also already mentioned, is this idea of serial killers who are either dressed as wolves or have trained a dog or a wolf to attack people for them. So the evidence for this is that they had several victims that they claimed were redressed after being killed. So, like, their clothes were not harmed, their bodies were very harmed, and then the clothes were put back onto the body.
JULIA: Oh.
GIGI: Or their clothes were removed without damage, like an animal did not tear off the clothes. They were off and, like, folded on the ground, I guess. And so they suspected a human would have to be involved if that was the case.
JULIA: That's bizarre. That I don't have a good explanation for, besides the fact that it might have been a person involved. I can see a situation where someone found the body and it was in a state of undress, and they decided to redress it to, like, preserve the person's dignity or honor, or modesty, so I could potentially see that as a thing. But the idea of them being completely undressed and the clothes folded to the side and then killed is— that's like— I'm trying to, like, go into my ,like, police procedural, murder mystery mind and be like—
AMANDA: Yeah.
JULIA: —"Why would that happen?"
AMANDA: This is taking me from like, "Oh, another mundane murder, unfortunately," into like, "Oh, this is why we're on Law & Order right now." Like, you know, the clues are stacking up.
JULIA: Yeah. Also, this idea of people dressing as animals and then killing folks is— and don't know if it's a spoiler for the village. It's been a long time since the village came out. I refuse to— and it's not even like the big spoiler and twist of the village, but this idea of them, like, in order to keep people around their community and around their village, having someone dress up and be like a scary monster for—
GIGI: Uh-hmm.
AMANDA: Uh-hmm.
JULIA: Like, to preserve the mystery and the myth, I think, is interesting as well.
AMANDA: Yeah. And like wearing skins, you know, making yourself into—
GIGI: Uh-hmm.
AMANDA: —a beast or letting legend help you in an effort of defense or offense, is something as old as war.
JULIA: Yeah, yeah. Absolutely. Good point, Amanda. I think— I never think of the, like, old tradition of wearing— but, like, the Berserkers—
AMANDA: Uh-hmm.
JULIA: —was also a great example of that with the bear skins, so that's interesting. Interesting.
GIGI: Yeah. When the other side of that is this idea of not a human dressed as a beast, but a human that has trained a beast—
JULIA: Hmm. True.
GIGI: —as well. So you maybe don't have someone in skins or whatever. You just have someone who's like, "Hey, wolf, go attack over there."
JULIA: Listen, there's quite a history of using animals as weaponry throughout human history, so I think that is a fair point as well.
GIGI: Uh-hmm.
JULIA: I think we— we're so used to— I feel like a lot of media has trained us to think of like, "Ah, yes, but the real monster is man." That I'm like, "Oh, no, the dog is fine. The dog didn't do anything wrong."
GIGI: Fluffy over there with the blood on his muzzle, he's doing great.
JULIA: He's fine. He's okay.
GIGI: He's a good boy.
AMANDA: Uh-hmm.
GIGI: So then the next theory, which you also touched on, so I think you guys have already touched on, like, all of the theories when we were first talking about this. But the other theory is that it is a non-native animal. So you did mention, like, "Oh, this is sounding kind of like a leopard, right?"
JULIA: Uh-hmm.
GIGI: And so there's a lot of non-native animals that share some characteristics with these different descriptions. And at this time, actually, France was kind of, like, the old-timey Tiger King. So they actually were importing a lot of non-native animals for these menageries, and they would have what were called beast fights. And so they would pit these animals, unfortunately, against each other for entertainment. And so this is obviously not something the peasantry can do or is doing. This is something that the nobility is doing, and quite far away from Gévaudan. So I think that's kind of the argument against it is that this isn't really happening very close by. But people have made compelling arguments that this could be a non-native animal that was brought there for these menageries, and it could be maybe a traveling menagerie or something that had gotten closer and something got away.
AMANDA: Totally.
JULIA: I feel like that's the mid-1700s French equivalent to the Colombian drug hippos. Do you know what I'm talking about?
GIGI: I do not.
JULIA: Oh, so in Colombia, Pablo Escobar had his, like, compound, right? And he had a menagerie in the compound. And when he was killed, it just kind of went to waste and the hippos from the menagerie escaped, and now, were just, like, reproducing and like, taking over the Colombian countryside. And they're like, "We don't know what to do with them. They're really hard to take out and kill. We're trying to, like, maybe, like, chemically neuter some of them so they can't reproduce as much." And there's some theories that they'll eventually make their way all the way up to the United States and people are like—
AMANDA: What now?
JULIA: —"We don't know what to do with them."
GIGI: Wow. And that's, like, one of the world's most dangerous animals.
AMANDA: Right.
JULIA: Exactly.
GIGI: That is not an animal you want, like, reproducing in your country.
JULIA: Exactly.
AMANDA: I was thinking too, like is it a boar? You know, like, is it a warthog? Like, there are a lot of— you know, I feel like always— I'm thinking in the sort of like pig direction whenever people are describing a mystery animal, because they can get quite big and they are quite powerful, especially if they're hairy or different to the, you know, pigs as livestock that one might be used to.
JULIA: Uh-hmm. Uh-hmm.
GIGI: When one of the descriptions did say that it had hooves on its feet. So, like—
JULIA: Hmm.
AMANDA: Hmm.
GIGI: —that's most of them are saying that has talons or some sort of, like, knife-like protrusion. But there was at least one description that said it has hooves.
AMANDA: Either the devil or a boar. It's one of two choices.
GIGI: Or a devil boar.
JULIA: Now, I'm curious if it potentially just, like, there happened to be several man-killing animals of different varieties around France at this time. Like, it's very possible that, like, if you're describing something with hooves and the other person says it has paws, what if they're two different animals?
GIGI: That's such a good point. And actually, something I found interesting that, like, did not make it into my book at all, is at the time— or actually through, like, the 100 years all around it, there were a bunch of kind of mystery creatures killing in different parts of France, not just in Gévaudan. And so Gévaudan had the highest death toll, the, like, most killings and so it got the attention. But there are other places where they're like, we randomly had like 10 deaths in a couple of months from a—
JULIA: Wow.
GIGI: —creature no one could describe or something.
AMANDA: Damn. It's also not lost on me, the toll and proportion of something like that to a village where, you know, everybody's labor really matters to keep things running.
JULIA: Yeah, and to have 10 individuals—
GIGI: Yeah.
JULIA: —die in a village that probably does not have— I would say more than 100 people would be a real loss.
GIGI: This is such a good point, and actually this is something that happened during the real beast situation, is there's this government official who's in charge of the region. His name is La Fon, [25:29] and La Fon is trying to keep people safe, but he's also a little bit out of touch with what people need. And so he's like, "Everyone, stay home. Don't let your girls go out in the fields." But they are living hand to mouth, and the way that they live is off of their cattle and sheep. So someone has to go out into the fields with the cattle and sheep. And this is actually another argument for me against it being a wolf, is that a wolf—
JULIA: Uh-hmm.
GIGI: —will typically go after the sheep, right? That's gonna be easier prey.
AMANDA: Yeah.
GIGI: Better pickins. They can drag it off really easy, versus a person. And this animal was not taking sheep, it was taking people.
AMANDA: That definitively says no wolf to me, because if I'm lazy and tired and hungry, and I see a sheep right there, and then I see a person, one's looking a lot better to me than the other.
JULIA: Yeah. I remembered when you were introducing the story, I was like, "Oh, she's making a real point of saying shepherdesses, instead of shepherds." And I was like, "Oh, that's so interesting." Like, I never thought about the, like, the feminine version of that word, and now it makes sense as to why you particularly used that one. I was like, "Ah, I see. I see."
GIGI: Yeah. It is mostly teenage girls, which is part of the reason that the church was like, "It's teenage girls' fault." It's mostly teenage girls that are getting attacked.
JULIA: Uh-hmm.
GIGI: Because that is mostly who is out with the sheep, watching the sheep, from a very young age. So kids actually started work in Gévaudan at five, and they were probably out in the fields as early—
JULIA: Uh-hmm.
GIGI: —as seven or eight, doing this kind of work. And there were no guns allowed in Gévaudan, because you could only have a gun in this time if you were nobility.
JULIA: Uh-hmm.
GIGI: And these are obviously not nobility.
JULIA: Yeah.
GIGI: So if there are wolf attacks, they are actually fending off wolfs with a stick or a—
JULIA: [27:10]
GIGI: —homemade pike. So, like, basically a knife tied to a stick.
JULIA: Sure. A little spear situation going on. I like it, I'm into it. That's— gosh, that's fascinating. There— are there any other theories about, like, what this beast, where it might have come from— or, I mean, besides the, "This is God punishing us sort of thing."?
GIGI: No, those are pretty much the theories that people either believed at the time or people have espoused now. And obviously, the ones that get espoused more by historians now are things like the menageries, wolves, wolf packs, and also, sometimes this idea of a human being involved as well.
JULIA: What was kind of the outcome? Did they just eventually die off? I know you mentioned that they thought that maybe they got the creature.
GIGI: Yeah. So, actually, so when the king learns about this, he sends out— he starts sending out hunters, and as the—
JULIA: Uh-hmm.
GIGI: —hunters are not capturing the beast, he sends kind of more and more. So we get these different hunters with different strategies that come out, including a pair of hunters, a father-son duo called the [28:13] And we also get—
JULIA: Uh-hmm.
GIGI: —the First Captain Duhamel and his 50 dragoons. And one of the descriptions of these 50 dragoons and Duhamel is that they came in and they kind of treated the situation like they were an occupying force, like not there to save the people.
JULIA: Hmm.
AMANDA: Hmm.
JULIA: Uh-oh.
GIGI: And so, basically, Gévaudan is like— these poor peasants are just like, "What the hell? We have a beast stalking us, and now we have soldiers who are like, 'I live in your house now and I'm gonna eat your food now.'"
AMANDA: "We just finished a war. We don't have enough food."
JULIA: Uh-hmm.
AMANDA: "Our shepherdesses are going missing. Like, come on."
GIGI: They don't have money. They're, like, struggling hand to mouth. They have horrific winters. It's like the worst winters in France are in this region.
JULIA: Oof.
GIGI: And they're just having a bad time of it. And so you get all these different hunters coming down and they, of course, are trying to catch the beast. So the king also wants everyone else trying, so he offers a reward of 200 livres which is, for reference, a year's salary. So that is a big for a— for like a dragoon, for someone who works for the king. So this is an incredible amount of money to people in this area. And so then he increases it, because he's annoyed that no one's getting this beast. He increases it to 4,000 which is, like, you're set for life.
JULIA: Whoa.
GIGI: Yes.
JULIA: That's a big jump.
GIGI: Yes. And then he increases it to 6,000, so you are, like, set for life. Like a Gévaudan peasant is like, "This is more money that I can literally imagine."
JULIA: Uh-hmm.
GIGI: And so people are, including residents, are like, "Okay, now I'm on this hunt." And he temporarily legalizes firearms. So people are trying to, like, find the beast now, and they're on the hunt. So some of the tactics they used, I just thought this— these were super funny, so I thought I would share. One of them was, they thought, "Okay, well, if it's attacking girls, we need to trick it into thinking something else is a girl." So they dressed sheep up in bonnets—
JULIA: Uh-hmm.
AMANDA: Ah.
GIGI: —and dresses.
JULIA: Yes.
AMANDA: Incredible.
JULIA: Incredible tactic. We love to see it.
GIGI: We do.
AMANDA: You know, if I was a newspaper in, like, St. Petersburg. I would cover it too, because that shit's hilarious.
JULIA: Yeah, this is it. This is the one.
GIGI: Exactly. Well, and this is actually one of my favorite things about history, is that you get into it and you're like, "This is so funny. Like, humans are so funny and so ridiculous." And I just love that for us. Like, I include, you know, modern day in that. I think people are gonna look back 100 years or 200 years from now and be like, "Wow, they were so silly."
JULIA: Yeah.
GIGI: But, yeah, so they dress the sheep up. They're like, "Of course. Like a beast is looking at your clothes, and that's how it's determining your gender."
AMANDA: Not— you know, my first thought, my first thought period blood on a sheep, because, like, I don't know, I'm thinking about it in a—
JULIA: Yeah.
AMANDA: —you know, animal way, but they are not.
GIGI: More bio way. Yeah, yeah.
JULIA: Uh-hmm.
GIGI: Yeah, well, and I think of it as, like, women tend to be slightly smaller-bodied, and they're also more available prey if they're out in the fields. So probably this is more likely that it's just a smaller-bodied human in a field.
AMANDA: Uh-hmm.
GIGI: But, anyway, so when that doesn't work, they're like, "Okay, well, it needs to be a human in a dress, but not girls." So they put the military men in dresses, which I love.
AMANDA: Hell yeah.
GIGI: And much to the displeasure of Duhamel—
JULIA: Yeah, yeah.
GIGI: —one of the hunters, a bunch of the men in town are like, "Oh, we're going to try that, too." So everyone's walking around in dresses and just cross-dressing, because now it's allowed.
AMANDA: I think that's incredible. And again, queer people, we have always been here, and so, you know, you got to imagine in that village of a 100, you got a dozen or so people who are like, "Fuck yeah, dude."
JULIA: Finally, my time has come.
GIGI: Yeah. And actually, that's something I, like, put in the book, because I was like, "I know that there were men in this book who were like, 'I have wanted to wear a dress my whole life,' and so like, we have that moment.
AMANDA: I love this.
JULIA: Uh-hmm. Good for them.
GIGI: So they also tried to poison corpses to, like, get the beast to poison itself by coming back to a corpse. That didn't work. And the people—
AMANDA: Ooh.
GIGI: —were super pissed, because that's, like—
JULIA: Uh-hmm.
AMANDA: Yeah.
GIGI: —desecration of corpse.
JULIA: Yeah.
GIGI: And then there's this very interesting thing I found in a book called Beast: Werewolves, Serial Killers, and Man-Eaters: The Mystery of the Monsters of the Gévaudan. This is a recipe that was supposed to help them kill the beast. I'm gonna read it to you.
JULIA: Oh, boy.
GIGI: Quote, "Then the hunters should combine 12 ounces of human fat from a Christian."
JULIA: Cool.
GIGI: "With Viper's blood, if available. And distribute—"
JULIA: If available.
AMANDA: Julia, if not, store-bought is fine. Store-bought is fine.
GIGI: "And distribute to the parties in boxes. The men should be armed with [32:55] and pistols and three square bullets, bitten by the teeth of a woman or girl."
AMANDA: Okay.
GIGI: "Then joined with pieces and also covered in fat. Plus hunting knives and iron claws, also greased. Patrol three by three in silence in a large triangle."
JULIA: Uh-hmm.
AMANDA: Gigi, you know what that quote is giving me? It's giving me like your boss sends an email and is like, "You know what has to happen here? Having not set foot in your floor or store in years. You know what has to happen here? You need to do this, this, this and this, and then everything will be fine." And every single person who receives the email is like, "What the fuck are you talking about? Like, how could you possibly think that's helpful?"
JULIA: Uh-hmm. Uh-hmm. Yeah. Yeah.
GIGI: Exactly. So anyway, these are the tactics that they're using and—
JULIA: Uh-hmm.
GIGI: —shockingly, these are not working.
JULIA: Didn't work?
GIGI: And so— but— okay. In 1765, in September, so this all was starting, I believe 1763.
JULIA: Uh-hmm.
GIGI: And so 1765 in September, a large wolf is killed along with its mate and cubs.
JULIA: Oh.
GIGI: And it was supposedly killed by the king's, like, personal bodyguard who he had sent down there, but it's also very possible that a local did it, and this guy claimed the credit.
AMANDA: Oh.
JULIA: Classic.
AMANDA: It's a 100% possible.
JULIA: Uh-hmm. Uh-hmm.
GIGI: Yeah. So it is stuffed, and it's sent to Versailles for the king to see it, right? And the funny part of this is the court's reaction to this is kind of like, "Meh. We've seen bigger."
JULIA: Yeah. That's just a wolf. Cool when it's a wolf, I guess.
GIGI: Like, the nobility is like, "Oh, was— this was what the fuss was about?" Like—
AMANDA: They had probably seen taxidermy from, you know, hunters from, like, all over the colonized world, so I'm sure that they're like, "Oh, I don't know. I've seen a real tiger." Versus these—
JULIA: I was gonna say the court's seen tigers.
AMANDA: Right. Versus these poor peasants are like, "Holy shit. Like it's eating my sheep."
GIGI: Yeah. So— but the nobility, even though they're, like, not that impressed, they were like, "Okay. Well, it's done. It's over. The problem is solved." Even though this is an ordinary wolf, and when they do an autopsy to stuff it, they don't find any human flesh in this wolf or any, like, any indicator.
JULIA: It seems kind of important.
GIGI: They do not find any indicator that it has been eating people. There's not human bones in there. There's not, like, peasant clothes that have remained. But the court is like, "Okay, it's done. All good."
JULIA: This is literally the plot of Jaws. I'm realizing this now, this is the plot of Jaws.
AMANDA: Oh, no.
JULIA: Just in France, on land.
GIGI: So meanwhile, in Gévaudan, the attacks continue for 18 more months and claim another 30 to 35 lives.
AMANDA: That's brutal.
JULIA: Oh, my God.
GIGI: Yeah. So the different people will kind of give you different death toll estimates, but like most of the estimates are upwards of 100 actual deaths and upwards of 200, I believe, attacks. So quite a lot has happened in these, like several years that this has been going on.
JULIA: I cannot wait to hear how this ends. I love that there's like, some intrigue and false endings, and then it didn't actually end. But first, Gigi, we got to grab a quick refill.
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JULIA: Hey, this is Julia, and welcome to the refill. First, of course, we always thank our newest patrons. Thank you to Lynx, Chindilani, and Lauren. Thank you so much for joining us at patreon.com/spiritspodcast, where you're gonna get some cool rewards, like ad-free episodes, recipe cards for every single episode and so much more. Plus, there might be some new stuff coming to our Patreon, so keep an ear out, keep an eye out, and we'll tell you a little bit more about that in the future. But in the meantime, thank you to our supporting producer-level patrons, Uhleeseeuh, Anne, Hannah, Jane, Lily, Matthew, Rikoelike, Captain Jonathan MAL-uh-kye Cosmos, Scott, Wil and AE (Ah), as well as our legend-level patrons, Audra, Bex, Chibi Yokai, Michael, Morgan H., Sarah, and Bea Me Up Scotty. And again, you too can join their ranks at patreon.com/spiritspodcast. Hey, things are tough out there right now, and we are so grateful that we get to have the audience that we have here. And that we get to speak to you every week about things that are important to us. And right now, I just want to highlight that it is particularly difficult out there for our trans and non-binary listeners, our friends and our family members. And so if you can do something to support those people in your life, I highly, highly recommend it. They need our help more than ever. And I would recommend looking at the Human Rights Council's resources for facing the future together, which is linked in the show notes of this episode. So be safe out there and be strong when you can, you know? And if you need a little escape from this world, the Earth that we are living on, and a little levity in your life, might I recommend listening to Pale Blue Pod? Pale Blue Pod is an astronomy podcast for people who are overwhelmed by the universe but want to be its friend. Astrophysicist Dr. Moiya McTier and a new guest each week, demystify space one topic at a time with open eyes, open arms, and open mouths from all of the laughing and the jaw-dropping. By the end of each episode, the cosmos will feel a little less, "Ah, too scary," and a lot more, "Ooh, so cool." New episodes every Monday, wherever you get your podcasts, check out Pale Blue Pod. And we are sponsored this week by Calm. Listen, there's a lot happening these days, and it can feel especially stressful or hopeless when things are outside of our control. But Calm can help you restore your sense of balance and peace amidst outside chaos. Maybe you've been having difficulty focusing lately. Maybe there's things like parenting pressures or work challenges or school commitments or just the general drama of living in the world that we're living in right now. And if this sounds like things that are stressing you out, I know something that can really make a difference for me, at least, is Calm. I really enjoy their sleep stories. I have had many sleepless nights, and the Calm sleep stories really do help me fall asleep quicker and also stay asleep. And if you are someone who struggles with sleeping, hey, there's nothing like listen to, like, a comfy train ride while someone narrates the train ride across England. It's very comfy, it's very cozy, and it takes you away. It's that escapism that I think a lot of us need. And Calm is the number one app for sleep and meditation, giving you the power to calm your mind and change your life. I recommend their meditations, which can help you work through anxiety and stress. They also have grounding exercises for when you're feeling overwhelmed, and they also have expert talks to help you handle stuff like grief or help to improve your self-esteem. Calm puts the tools that you need right into your pocket and can help you dedicate just a few minutes each day to living a happier, healthier life, Stress less, sleep more, and live better with Calm. For listeners of our show, Calm is offering an exclusive offer of 40% off a calm premium subscription at calm.com/spirits. Go to C-A-L-M, .com/spirits for 40% off unlimited access to Calm's entire library. That's calm.com/spirits.
ASHLEY: Some mysteries can be solved by looking at the facts, but in some cases, answers lie in the unknown. I'm Ashley Flowers, and each week on my podcast, So Supernatural, we explore some of the world's most bizarre occurrences and unravel their possible explanations no matter how strange, because sometimes to get to the truth, you have to look beyond what we know to be reality. Listen to So Supernatural now wherever you get your podcasts.
JULIA: And now, let's get back to our show.
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JULIA: We are back. And Gigi, we love to ask our guests what you have been enjoying lately, from a cocktail, mocktail, coffee creations, what have you. What's been your drink of choice lately?
GIGI: Actually, recently, I've been doing a lot of wine. So I live in Portugal. I've lived here for about three years, and we have these incredible red wines from a region called Alentejo, and I am obsessed. So when I'm in Portugal, I am generally drinking Alentejo red wine, or I'm drinking what's called green wine, Vinho Verde, which is a lightly sparkling wine that we have here.
JULIA: Hmm, I love a Vinho Verde. It's like one of my favorites. If I am doing like a non-classic wine in my mind, like not a Sauvignon Blanc or a Chardonnay, I'm always trying to search for like a Spanish or Portuguese wine, and that is one of my favorites.
GIGI: We do wine really well here. A plus for Portugal.
JULIA: Hell yeah. Well, Gigi, I feel like we left off a little bit of a cliffhanger when it comes to the beast. Tell us more, the killings kept happening, even though we thought we had killed what ended up being just a normal wolf. Where did we go from here?
GIGI: Yep. So the royal court has decided that this is over, and then suddenly, in 1767, there is an sudden outbreak of a bunch of attacks. And so a local nobleman is like, "Okay, we're gonna organize another hunt. This has gone on long enough. Something is still killing people." And so on June 19th, one of the hunters takes down what they say is a wolf, however, however, later on, they look and it actually— you know, it does have indicators that it has eaten human flesh.
JULIA: Okay.
GIGI: So they're like, "Okay, we think this is the thing." And it is not totally described as a wolf. And there's actually a nobleman who inspects it, and he says something along the lines— I don't have the exact quote right now, but something along the lines of, "This is a creature whose father was a lion and God knows what its mother was."
AMANDA: Oh. Oh, okay. Okay. We're gonna imply that the mom is what— okay.
JULIA: Uh-hmm. Uh-hmm. Sure.
AMANDA: Of course.
JULIA: Sure. That makes sense. That makes sense. That checks out.
GIGI: Yep. So it is something that the nobleman himself, even possibly someone who would have seen exotic animals could not identify, which is kind of fun.
AMANDA: Wow.
GIGI: It's kind of why this legend survives as a mystery today, because even people that maybe should have known what it was, didn't. And we do not have preserved the remains or a taxidermy or whatever of the creature.
JULIA: We taxidermied a regular wolf, but we couldn't taxidermy the thing that no one could identify? Come on, gang.
AMANDA: Yeah.
GIGI: And maybe they did and it just got lost to history, but it's— it wasn't in any of my research that the second creature was taxidermied. I think the first one got taxidermied because it was, like, to prove to the court that it was over. And at that point, the court didn't care, and it was a more local noble man that was like, "Okay, well, this is happening in my backyard, which I don't like."
JULIA: Right. It was, like, 18 months later, and at that point, the court had moved on.
GIGI: Right. They had their own gossip, and they had like, you know, this is a time where everyone's, like, poisoning each other and stuff. They have other stuff to worry about.
JULIA: Yeah, we're building towards the French Revolution. We don't have time for this.
GIGI: Yeah. Exactly.
AMANDA: So, Gigi, I have to know, when did you first hear about this legend and what about it like stuck with you and wouldn't leave you alone to the extent that you ended up setting a book during this panic?
GIGI: A friend of mine actually sent me— I think it was done by Puppet History, a, like, a breakdown of The Beast of Gévaudan, and it was so compelling. And I— again, this perfect intersection between history and kind of unbelievable things, mythology, legend, and I love where those two things intersect. And so for me, that's what really jumped out. And I just had it in the back of my mind for a while, but again, I couldn't find my way in right away because I didn't want to write a book that sensationalized the killing of girls.
JULIA: Uh-hmm.
GIGI: And so it wasn't until I realized, "Oh, this can be a story about saving girls," that that's when I really went, you know, pen to paper.
JULIA: Gotcha. That's so interesting. I love the little things that kind of needle our way or worm our ways into our minds and just can't— you can't let it go. You know what I mean? And even if it like— it's an idea, and then you come back to it years or months later, just this idea that's like— I just— I couldn't let it go. It just—it's still there. It's still stuck there.
GIGI: Exactly. And I have a— I actually have a Word document on my computer where, if I hear something that's really compelling, either a weird historical fact, like the, you know, sheep being dressed in dresses.
JULIA: So good.
GIGI: Or a legend or something that's kind of sticking with me for more than a day or two, it goes into this document. So when I'm planning a book, I also go and I look, and I say, "Okay, what in this document fits into this idea I already have, or is better than the idea that I've been playing with?"
JULIA: I know that Notes app very well. I'm very familiar with that feeling. So it's really— I am so intrigued by, like, this idea too, because when you message us, I was like, "Okay, I want to see, like, what other stuff she's written, what else she's talked about. You know, what else has been said in other interviews." And I love this idea that you consider yourself a accidental horror writer, and I think that is something that I've kind of seen recurring for a lot of the authors who come on, who particularly write horror, where a lot of them are like, "I'm a big, scaredy cat," and I'm like, "You write some of the most horrifying things I've ever seen. What are you talking about?" And it's this idea of, like, it's so easy to write horror when you are afraid, because you're just writing about the things that—
GIGI: Hmm.
JULIA: —you particularly fear. Do you think that that was something— in writing We Are The Beasts, was that something that you were like, fully embracing, or was it something that you were like, again, it was like, "I didn't mean for this to be horror, but I am trying to channel my own fears."?
GIGI: The first time I sent a book to my agent and she was like, "Oh, this is horror." I said, "I don't know what genre this book is, because it was a really weird project."
JULIA: Uh-hmm.
GIGI: And she's like, "It's horror." And I was like, "You're kidding me. Like, I'm so scared I can't read other people's horror. You're telling me I write horror?" And then the more I thought about it, the more I thought, "Yeah, I am writing about things that scare me." And the things that scare me are often things that are in the real world. And so I do end up pulling from history. I do end up thinking about the systems that are in place, right? So these shepherdesses, they're out in the fields, and they have no other choice but to be out in the fields.
AMANDA: Uh-hmm.
GIGI: So when this beast starts killing, they cannot do anything else except take their sheep out and hope for the best, and have their pikes and, you know, maybe team up so that there's two of them instead of one, because otherwise they starve. And so those are the kinds of things I want to explore, is like the horror of reality and how the system that kept them poor is also what put them in danger, not only from the beast, but in the book, from the men in their own village, from the people with power, whether that be wealthy folks or whether it be men, or whether it be the soldiers that are coming into their homes.
JULIA: Hmm. And a very reasonable fear is not only for like the average person, but particularly for teenage girls. And to make that the focus of a YA horror novel, I think is going to speak to a lot of people, especially the— a lot of our folks in our audience.
GIGI: Hopefully, yes. Everyone go buy it—
JULIA: Yes.
GIGI: —and then tell me— I mean, don't tell me directly that you hate it, but tell the internet.
JULIA: Uh-hmm. I feel you, I feel you.
AMANDA: So I feel like there is so much more we are going to have to talk about with you, Gigi. I know that I saw something on your Instagram a couple weeks ago as a recording about your queer anti-fascist art heist book, the draft of which you just finished. So trust ,you will be back for that book's release, if not before. But in the meantime, could you let—
JULIA: Uh-hmm.
AMANDA: —our listeners know where they can follow you and your work online? And of course, you can find a link to buy Gigi's books in the description of this episode.
GIGI: Yeah. So you can all find me at gigigriffis.com, which is where you can find not only, like, a link to get on my newsletter list or, like, read my blog or whatever, but also whatever social media I'm active on at the time. Our social media landscape seems to be changing a lot lately, so I will say—
JULIA: Hmm.
GIGI: —it's best to be, like, on one of the mailing lists.
AMANDA: Uh-hmm.
GIGI: I only send emails if there's book news. You're not going to get hear from me every week. You're not going to hear the same thing from me 25 times. You're just going to hear from me when it's like, "Oh, this book is getting an audio edition, by the way." That's it.
JULIA: Uh-hmm. Hell yeah. I love that. In times where we don't know where we're going to be getting our sources, it is, like, sometimes a little stressful to be like, "I don't know what to do." An email list is always helpful.
GIGI: Uh-hmm.
JULIA: Gigi, thank you so much for joining us. This was— I feel like I got so much more information about the beast that I was anticipating, and I can't wait to have you back at some point in the near future so we can talk more about your creative process, your writing process, and the things that scare you.
GIGI: Hmm. Cool. Thank you so much for having me. This has been a pleasure.
JULIA: It was our pleasure as well. And listeners, remember the next time you go to take care of your sheep out in the field, stay creepy.
AMANDA: Stay cool.
JULIA: Later, satyrs.
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